


Cracked

by adanedhel



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22610758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adanedhel/pseuds/adanedhel
Summary: He is no longer Maitimo. No, not after the marring of his body, he is no longer well-shaped. He is bent, he is broken, he is no longer whole. He is cracked-through like a mended piece of pottery.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Cracked

**Author's Note:**

> i was going to do more with this, but this is fine. i just wanted to talk a little bit about this topic. I would like to use this as a pre-face maybe for something exploring this more in depth later, but right now i like it just as this little snippet.

He is no longer Maitimo. No, not after the marring of his body, he is no longer well-shaped. He is bent, he is broken, he is no longer _whole_. He is cracked-through like a mended piece of pottery. His body is lined and gnarled and no longer the smooth, pretty thing he was named for. Even his hair was ruined beyond combing, and cropped nearly to the scalp.

Not just his body, though, was misshapen. His heart, his soul, his _fëa_ was distorted.

It is why he will never truly heal. Why his scars will never fade, why his shoulder will still ache. Why his stump-arm will sometimes sear with the pain of a fresh wound. When the _fëa_ is broken it is as if the threads that hold the body together unravel.

When an elf is _broken_... Truly broken, in body and soul, tortured and twisted and mangled, they may die. With their _hröa_ beyond repair, their spirit may leave the body behind. They will be released from their battered form, to return across the sea for healing. Damage to the _fëa_ is not easily mended, and many thousands of years may pass before they are whole enough to return. Many elves would prefer this fate to the _other_.

Some elves have a strong _fëa_. Seemingly unbreakable, they cannot be shattered as easily as their body. They will piece themselves back together, over and over, and eventually the chips and the cracks and the mending of pieces together starts to change the shape. When something is broken, it can never be how it was before. The more times you break something, the more pieces you lose, and the more you cobble it back together, the more distorted the shape becomes. Elves with strong _fëa_ can survive this process, many times, if need be. But they change.

This is how the orcs came to be. Those that were weak died, and those that were strong survived the ruthless torture of the Dark Lord. Every time they pieced themselves back together, they came back harder, stronger, angrier. The change in their _fëa_ changed the very body itself. Wicked, ugly, tortured things they became.

Maedhros survived Angband, but he did not return whole. His hand not the only thing that was left hanging from Thangorodrim. 

The fire of his soul burns all the hotter, but the flame is wrong. It mirrors the flames of hell themselves, being stoked from their heat. His body is different, that is easy to tell even at a glance. But some things are more different than expected.

His once bright, sea-grey eyes are now a stinging yellow. Piercing and hot, and his gaze is terrible to hold. His teeth are sharper, his fingernails dark and hard. His voice is deep as ever, but no longer smooth. It is gravelly and rough, what was before a sighing stream is now a sea in a turbulent storm. More aggressive, quicker to anger, harder to please. 

Maedhros survived Angband. But he is not the same.


End file.
